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SCHILLER, FRIEDRICH. 



SCHILLER, FRIEDRICH. 



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serves in the preface, the nature of the drama does not admit of the 

 operation of chance or accident ; and yet, in spite of this, he makes 

 Fiesco kill his wife by accident. But there are many very justly 

 admired beauties. The local colouring, that is, that painting of the 

 historic spirit aiid manner which lies deeper than costume, is well 

 produced. The catastrophe has a most solemn effect. " The mid- 

 night silence of the sleeping city," says Carlyle, " interrupted only 

 by the distant sounds of watchmen, by the low hoarse murmur of 

 the sea, or the stealthy footsteps and disguised voice of Fiesco, is 

 conveyed to our imagination by a few brief touches. At length the 

 gun is fired, and the wild uproar which ensues is no less strikingly 

 exhibited." 



' Kabale und Liebe,' with some effective points and ' situations,' is 

 still indifferent, if not bad, and far inferior to ' Fiesco,' or the ' Robbers.' 

 It is a household tragedy of the Kotzebue school, extravagantly written, 

 puling with sentimentality, unreal, unpoetic, and unsatisfactory. The 

 question of cabal and love is entirely forced from its import by a want 

 of truth iu the delineation. Considered as a drama, its construction 

 is very faulty. These three plays all manifestly belong to the same 

 period, and are curious as evidences of the wild enthusiasm of a young 

 poetic spirit. 



In 1783 Schiller was appointed theatre-poet, a post of respectability 

 and reasonable profit. He translated Shakspere's ' Macbeth ' and some 

 French plays for the theatre, besides his other duties. In 1785 

 appeared the first number of the ' Thalia,' a miscellany containing 

 essays, criticisms, &c., on the drama, edited by him, which was con- 

 tinued till 1794. In the first number the first three acts of 'Don 

 Carlos ' were inserted, which were highly admired. In the ' Thalia ' 

 also were published his 'Philosophical Letters.' Having rejected on 

 the one side the arguments of the supernaturalists, and on the other 

 those of the Spinozists, the two parties then at war, he settled into a 

 creed in which faith and reason embrace. His creed is a sort of 

 mystical deism, which is expressed in this one phrase, " The universe 

 is a thought of God's." These ' Letters ' remain a fragment. They 

 are written with great power, but have little originality. 



During the spring of 1785 Schiller migrated into Saxony, and settled 

 near Leipzig. Here he wrote the ' Ode to Joy,' one of his most 

 beautiful creations, and the novel of the ' Ghost-Seer,' which was never 

 completed. He then went to Dresden, where he finished ' Don Carlos,' 

 " the first of his plays which bears the stamp of full maturity." It 

 is indeed a fine work, though deficient in unity of subject and treat- 

 ment, which, as he himself remarks, results from his having delayed 

 so long between the first part and the completion of the second. It is 

 the most dramatic of all his plays, and the scenes between Posa and 

 Philip, and between Philip and the Inquisitor, are among the finest 

 specimens of dramatic writing. There is real passion beating through 

 every vein of the work, and its situations are as effective as complex ; 

 but Schiller has himself criticised it in his ' Briefe iiber Don Carlos,' 

 after which little is to be said. 



In 1789 Eichhorn retired from the chair of history at Jena, and 

 Gothe recommended Schiller to the place. Here he married Fraiilein 

 Lengefeld, and seemed at last comfortably settled. It was here, in 

 addition to his lectures, that he worked at and published his excellent 

 ' History of the Thirty Years' War.' The philosophy of Kant was now 

 producing its revolution in the world of thought, and Schiller embraced 

 it with ardour. His aesthetic essays upon Kantian principles are some 

 of the profoundest and most important speculations on art that we 

 have met with, particularly those on ' Grace and Dignity,' ou the 

 ' Pathetic,' on the ' Naive and Sentimental,' on the ' Limits of the 

 Beautiful,' and the ' Letters on ^Esthetic Culture.' 



In 1799 appeared ' Wallenstein.' This vast trilogy, which is his 

 greatest work, and which in truth exhibits greater knowledge, poetic 

 power, and mastery over materials, than his other plays, still appears 

 to be written on a false principle. The drama is not the sphere for 

 pure history. The local colouring is of course necessary in any histo- 

 rical subject, but to make this the dominant element is falsifying the 

 first principle of the drama; yet this is what Gothe and Schiller have 

 done, the former in ' Gotz von Berlichingeu ' and ' Egmont,' the latter 

 in ' Walleustein ' and ' Tell.' The historic truth of the scenes of 

 ' Wallenstein' maybe admitted, but their dramatic purpose and power 

 are comparatively small. ' Wallenstein ' is so well known through 

 the beautiful translation of Coleridge, that we need make no further 

 comment. 



Soon after the publication of 'Wallenstein,' Schiller once more 

 changed his abode. The mountain air of Jena was prejudicial to his 

 lungs, and he determined to go to Weimar, where his acquaintance 

 with Gothe ripened into friendship, and he shared with him the super- 

 intendence of the theatre. (See what Gothe says on the valuable 

 exertions of Schiller in the remodelling of plays, in his ' Werke,' b. 

 xxxv.) 



In 1800 appeared 'Maria Stuart,' not the most successful effort of 

 his pen : its travestie of history is ridiculous, its conception of the 

 character of Elizabeth quite absurd, the vehement and undignified 

 Bquabble between the two queens unworthy of the author; but it 

 contains powerful writing, and is an evidence of increased knowledge 

 of the stage. On the other hand, the catastrophe is admirable. 



In 1801 was published ' Die Jungfrau von Orleans,' as direct a con- 

 trast to ' La Pucelle ' as the earnestness and impassioned enthusiasm 



of Schiller were to the scepticism of Voltaire. As a drama its 

 construction is not so careful. Montgomery is episodical, and the 

 black knight ambiguous. But a great spirit is at work ; divine poetry 

 irradiates the scene, and we rife from the perusal under the enchanter's 

 spell Carlyle has described the Jungfrau as possessing a keen and 

 fervent heart of fire, which the loneliness of her life and her deep 

 religious feelings fanned into a flame. She sits in solitude with her 

 flocks beside the chapel under the ancient Druid oak, and visions are 

 revealed to her such as no human eyes beheld. It seems the force of 

 her own spirit expressing its feelings in forms which react upon itself. 

 All this Schiller has delineated in a masterly manner. The piece had 

 unbounded success, and on the night of its representation at Leipzig, 

 when the curtain dropped at the end of the first act, there arose a 

 deafening shout of " Es lebe Friederich Schiller ! " (" Long live 

 Frederick Schiller ! ") accompanied by trumpets. 



In 1803 he published the 'Braut von Messina,' which was an 

 experiment to see how far a play constructed on antique principles 

 could move a modern audience. It was a failure, although in the 

 preface he argued the point with ability." The plot is simple. A 

 chorus is introduced, which gives occasion to magnificent poetry ; but 

 the whole fails to move or interest. It contains parts of as fine writing 

 as any in his works, but the whole experiment was a mistake, which 

 a critic like himself should never have made. The form which poetry 

 seeks for itself in any country or period is suited to that period, but 

 not to another. He thought that if he made the sentiments and 

 subject modern, he could with impunity, or rather with success, clothe 

 them in ancient forms. 



In 1804, a year after, " the slight degree of failure or miscalculation," 

 says Carlyle, " which occurred in the instance of the ' Bride of Mes- 

 sina,' was abundantly redeemed. ' William Tell ' is one of Schiller's 

 very finest dramas ; it exhibits some of the highest triumphs which 

 his genius combined with his art ever realised." (' Life of Schiller,' 

 p. 263.) A. W. Schlegel has also said, " The last and best of Schiller's 

 works is ' Tell.' Here he has wholly returned to the poetry of 

 history." (' Dram. Lect ,' ii. 392.) But the office of the drama is not 

 and cannot be the ' poetry of history ; ' it is the poetry of passion in 

 action. A drama means an action now doing, not a poetical painting 

 of history. It is on this ground that while revelling iu the delicious 

 poetry, the exquisite painting, the truth of character and history 

 exhibited in ' Tell,' we must condemn it as a drama. Its merits, 

 such as they are, deserve all admiration, but as a drama it falsifies and 

 abnegates its vital principle, and as a model it is worthless. The 

 vital error is making the historical element, instead of the passionate, 

 the dominant one. But there are still other serious faults of con- 

 ception and construction. Not to dwell upon the superfluous 

 episodes of Bertha and Rudeny, and of Attinghausen, we have to 

 remark on the error of the conception of Tell himself, the idea of 

 which was furnished by Gothe. Tell is not a patriot, but a simple, 

 sturdy, brave, open, resolute peasant. As a portraiture it is exquisite, 

 but then these two serious consequences result from the conception : 

 first, Tell has nothing intrinsically to do with the revolution 

 of Switzerland; he is not mixed up with its hopes and interests 

 beyond that of any other peasant, and has no more visible share in 

 it than the killing of Gessler ; secondly, Tell, not being a patriot, is 

 no more than a murderer. This most serious aesthetic fault is 

 inseparable from the conception. He is wronged by Gessler, and 

 lies in wait for him in a rocky pass, and there shoots him. This is 

 simply murder. In his soliloquy previous to the shot he nowhere 

 indicates an intention of sacrificing the tyrant who oppresses his 

 country and him, but simply his revenge at the man who has sub- 

 jected him to shoot the apple from his son's head, and whose further 

 hatred he dreads. Had he shot Gessler immediately after having shot 

 at his son, we could have forgiven the excited passion of a father ; 

 but he broods over it, and lies in wait for his revenge. Gessler is a 

 mere stage-tyrant, a devil without motive, without glimpse of cha- 

 racter. We must observe that in the midst of all this erroneous 

 conception there is some of his finest writing and execution, and that 

 certain points are eminently dramatic : the scene, for instance, where 

 Tell sits in the defile among the rocks of Kussnacht, waiting the 

 approach of his victim, and the unconcern of the every-day travellers 

 with their petty interests, as they pass along, contrasted with the 

 fierce and gloomy purposes of Tell. This was Schiller's last play. 



On the 9th of May 1805, after a lingering illness, he felt his end 

 approaching. Of his friends he took a touching but tranquil farewell. 

 Some one inquiring how he felt, he said, "Calmer and calmer;" 

 simple words expressive of the mild heroism of the man. About six, 

 he sank into a deep sleep ; once for a moment he looked up with a 

 lively air, and said, " Many things were growing clear and plain to 

 him." And so he died. The great and noble spirit which animated 

 his heart now remains to us in his works, a heirloom to posterity, 

 familiar to every lover of poetry, and worshipped by the whole 

 nation. 



In considering his separate works, it will perhaps be thought that we 

 have leaned too much to objection ; but we have tried them by the 

 high standard which they demanded ; and as for eulogy, they have 

 had more than enough of that. We have endeavoured conscientiously 

 to direct the judgment of the student. A few words in general on his 

 poetical character may not be unimportant. 



